Videos by American Songwriter
Talking with Dar Williams always feels less like an interview than it does checking in with an old friend and getting an update about where she’s at in her life. This time around, the reason for our conversation is the impending release of Williams’ seventh studio album, The Promised Land.
Talking with Dar Williams always feels less like an interview than it does checking in with an old friend and getting an update about where she’s at in her life. This time around, the reason for our conversation is the impending release of Williams’ seventh studio album, The Promised Land.
Despite production by Brad Wood, who is probably best known for his work with The Smashing Pumpkins, The Promised Land still sounds like a Dar disc-and that’s good news. Of course, Wood has also produced albums by many other artists, from The Bangles to Ben Lee to Liz Phair. Williams says he brought the same sensibility to her work that he did to the latter’s. “If you look at [his work] with Liz Phair, that’s more [analogous] to me… Because there’s a lot of production there, but nothing gets in the way of her voice, her lyrics, her mood. Even though she and I are very different, she’s clearly visible-and that’s very much what [Brad] does.” In addition to capturing the essence of whoever he’s working with, Williams applauds Wood for being a serious student of rock and roll and at the same time being able to embrace the feminine.
The Promised Land‘s 12 tracks continue Williams’ tradition of storytelling-many personal, others universal, some both at once. Highlights range from “Book of Love” and “The Easy Way”-both of which deal with romantic relationships-to “Buzzer,” a more rock-oriented song about the famous Milgram Experiments, a series of social psychology tests that were conducted at Yale. There is also a cover of the lovely Fountains of Wayne tune “Troubled Times” on the album. “I liked the idea of having something very lush and beautiful,” she says. “Just doing a very pretty pop song. I [also] loved that it’s a deceptive song. It’s got this beautiful chorus of ‘Maybe it’ll all work out’-and the verse completely betrays that! The way that they capture it without giving it away, without tilting their hand and saying ‘This guy’s kind of a loser’, is beautiful.”
Williams grew up in Chappaqua, New York, a suburban town on the Hudson River, and suburbia continues to inform her songwriting. “I write a lot about people who come from the suburbs,” she tells me. “I think [growing up there] made me assign a certain mysticism to urban life… And also, I think being in the suburbs prepares you to know that all is not what it looks like… A person who has a lot of money being a schmuck is a pretty well known story. But the people who come to that point of ‘is this my beautiful house? Is this my beautiful wife?’…I’ve had the privilege of seeing people at those crossroads. I got to see some of those bigger questions being asked from underneath the façade, and I think that’s really interesting. I will never undersell the suburbs because I think there’s a lot more stories there [than people realize].”
These days, Williams and her husband and son make their home in the Beacon, New York area, not far from where she was raised. And she still finds more there than meets the eye. “Where I live is incredible,” she says. “[There are] a lot of Moms and Pops asking big questions about how to be principled and how to protect the Hudson River and how to educate our children… And I kind of feel like there’s a little bit of agnosticism that fuels all that action. Because we don’t feel like we’ve got all the answers. We feel like we’ve gotta define it and create it and work really hard to get there. To me, people living out their questions is the promised land.”
